I
must repeat my hope that she is perfectly satisfied, and that the
close of her life may not be embittered by suspicion, fear, or
discontent. What new security does she prefer--the funds, a mortgage,
or your land? At all events, she must be made easy." So Gibbon left
town and lay at Reading on his road to Bath: here he passed about ten
days with his step-mother, who was now nearly eighty years of age. "In
mind and conversation she is just the same as twenty years ago," he
writes to Lord Sheffield; "she has spirits, appetite, legs, and eyes,
and talks of living till ninety. I can say from my heart, Amen." And
in another letter, a few days later, he says: "A _tete-a-tete_ of
eight or nine hours every day is rather difficult to support; yet I do
assure you that our conversation flows with more ease and spirit when
we are alone, than when any auxiliaries are summoned to our aid. She
is indeed a wonderful woman, and I think all her faculties of the mind
stronger and more active than I have ever known them.... I shall
therefore depart next Friday, but I may possibly reckon without my
host, as I have not yet apprised Mrs. G. of the term of my visit, and
will certainly not quarrel with her for a short delay." He then went
to Althorpe, and it is the last evidence of his touching a
book--"exhausted the morning (of the 5th November) among the first
editions of Cicero." Then he came to London, and in a few days was
seized with the illness which in a little more than two months put an
end to his life.

His malady was dropsy, complicated with other disorders. He had most
strangely neglected a very dangerous symptom for upwards of thirty
years, not only having failed to take medical advice about it, but
even avoiding all allusion to it to bosom friends like Lord Sheffield.
But longer concealment was now impossible. He sent for the eminent
surgeon Farquhar (the same who afterwards attended William Pitt), and
he, together with Cline, at once recognised the case as one of the
utmost gravity, though they did not say as much to the patient. On
Thursday, the 14th of November, he was tapped and greatly relieved. He
said he was not appalled by the operation, and during its progress he
did not lay aside his usual good-humoured pleasantry. He was soon out
again, but only for a few days, and a fortnight after another tapping
was necessary. Again he went out to dinners and parties, which must
have been most imprudent at his age and in his stat